Out Of the Tribe

I just quit Tribel.

I don't know what it is about this blog that offends people.  It is my writing style?  Is it my choice of topics to write about?  Is it because I think black women are more attractive when they don't wear their hair in cornrows?  But apparently someone at the social media platform Tribel - the more liberal, more fair, more welcoming alternative to Facebook - was ticked off at me for something.  When I tried to post a link to my previous blog post - about Gaza -  I got a message saying, "You cannot post this link in Tribel."  I tried repeatedly to post it again and got the same message.  I posted the link to my entire blog to see what would happen; that didn't work.   An attempt to repost a link to a blog entry that had nothing to do with Gaza proved to be equally futile.   

So I terminated my account.  So what? No one I knew posted there, and I had little if any reason to interact with those who were on Tribel.  And I only set up an account there to post links to my blog because Facebook wouldn't let me do so on its platform.  I got approximately the same number of pageviews for my Gaza post that I'd gotten with previous posts, indicating that Tribel was a waste of time anyway.   

And any social media platform that purports to be liberal, fair and welcoming only to block something you have to say ought not to stay in business.  

MySpaced Out

My MySpace page is no more.

After four years on MySpace, I terminated my account. My decision to do so was swift; my experience in terminating it was less so. I made the decision to end it when MySpace changed its format in a pathetic attempt to make it look more like Facebook. I went on MySpace this past Friday morning to post a music video on my page - I posted a different one every Friday - and that's when I found it had been changed. I went ahead and tried to post a video, but the new features - many of which I didn't understand - were cumbersome, the features I'd been using had become very user-unfriendly, and the screen itself was too big to fit on my monitor. I had to zoom out to 75 percent to even see the log-out button (which I only figured out after having switched off my computer twice and rebooted). Also, every time you place your mouse over the upper left hand corner, strange graphics - a mounted moose head, an octopus's arm - appear out of nowhere. What's up with that? Furthermore - and this was the clincher - my profile page looked like a Facebook wall. It no longer resembled a standard Web page.

Because this was all far more trouble than it was worth, I went to my account settings - once I figured out how - and moved to terminate my account. And that's when the fun began.

The "delete account" button was not working. MySpace let its customers know that, if they wanted to quit the service, they had to go through an eleven-step procedure involving writing the words "REMOVE PROFILE" on your page and informing customer support of your decision. During the weekend, I checked to see my page had been deleted. It hadn't. I went on to MySpace to see if the "delete account" button was working at last. It wasn't. I got to thinking the I'd be on MySpace for life, if they so decided.

Finally, my MySpace page was taken down yesterday. That's it - it's over. And although I regretted leaving, I had no patience for a social networking site that changed and/or got rid of everything I liked about it.

It's no big loss. I only had 74 friends on MySpace, while I had thrice - that's three times - as many on Facebook. Many of my MySpace friends were also friends on Facebook, and those who weren't were people I never really knew and had never even heard of before they asked to be friends with me. So terminating my MySpace page meant doing something I rarely do - cutting cords irrevocably and never looking back. I just wish MySpace had made it easier to do.

So what of my Music Video Of the Week segment, you say? I'm glad you asked. Blogger.com now has a new feature that allows its customers to add separate pages, as you already know, and I am seriously considering reviving my Music Video Of the Week feature on such a page on this blog. But because I might be getting a new PC - mine is eight years old - and because I'd feel compelled to post Christmas music videos in December when good Christmas music videos can be hard to find, I'll likely wait and bring back the feature after the first of the year.

So stay tuned.

And if you plan to join or stick with MySpace, good luck. You're going to need it.